Month: January 2018

President Donald Trump imposed stiff tariffs on imported solar panels Monday, in a bid to protect U.S. manufacturing jobs. Trump has often promised to get tough with China and other exporters that he says compete unfairly with U.S. manufacturers. The tariffs start out at 30 percent on solar panels and decline over time. Two solar panel manufacturing companies were seeking even higher taxes to protect them from competition by low-cost imports, in the hope of reviving their troubled firms. The $28-billion solar energy industry employs 260,000 people in the United States. However, a solar industry trade group says only one-seventh of the industry’s workers manufacture panels, while the rest install them. The Solar Energy Industries Association says the new tariffs will cost tens of thousands of U.S. jobs and delay or cancel billions of dollars in clean energy investment. China and other nations that face these new tariffs may challenge the decision at the World Trade Organization. …

France’s prime minister on Monday renewed a push to tempt bankers to Paris after Britain leaves the European Union by pledging to temporarily exempt expats from paying into state pension schemes and making more places available in bilingual schools. France has already announced measures to cut labor costs to make Paris more attractive to the banking sector post-Brexit following the election of President Emmanuel Macron, who has made labor rules more flexible and cut wealth tax. Now EU expatriates in France will be able to opt out of compulsory contributions to the state pension scheme which make up about 2.3 percent of an employee’s gross salary. Prime Minister Edouard Philippe told investors that there would be 1,000 places available in the Paris region’s multilingual schools next September, while three new multilingual high schools would be created by 2021. France would also be ready to handle disputes over financial contracts governed by British law in March with new international sections at the Paris Commercial Court and the Paris Court of Appeal, Paris Europlace financial lobby said in a statement. “The Paris financial center now has strong momentum to welcome companies and international investors and strengthen its leading position in post-Brexit Europe,” Gerard Mestrallet, the head of the Paris Europlace financial lobby said in a statement. The announcement came at a highly-publicized summit on Monday of global CEOs — including Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein and JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon — in Versailles, where the prime minister explained French reforms, in English, over …

No cashiers, no lines, no registers — this is how Amazon sees the future of in-store shopping. The online retailer opened its Amazon Go concept store to the public Monday, selling milk, potato chips and other items typically found at a convenience shop. Amazon employees have been testing the store, which is at the bottom floor of the company’s Seattle headquarters, for about a year. The public opening is another sign that Amazon is serious about expanding its physical presence. It has opened more than a dozen bookstores, taken over space in some Kohl’s department stores and bought Whole Foods last year, giving it 470 grocery stores. But Amazon Go is unlike its other stores. Shoppers enter by scanning the Amazon Go smartphone app at a turnstile. When they pull an item of the shelf, it’s added to their virtual cart. If the item is placed back on the shelf, it is removed from the virtual cart. Shoppers are charged when they leave the store. The company says it uses computer vision, machine learning algorithms and sensors to figure out what people are grabbing off its store shelves. Amazon says families can shop together with just one phone scanning everyone in. Anything they grab from the shelf will also be added to the tab of the person who signed them in. But don’t help out strangers: Amazon warns that grabbing an item from the shelf for someone else means you’ll be charged for it. At about 1,800 square feet, the …

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch on Monday called on Facebook to pay “trusted” news publishers a carriage fee, similar to the model used by cable companies, amid efforts by the social media company to fight misinformation on its platform. “Facebook and Google have popularized scurrilous news sources through algorithms that are profitable for these platforms but inherently unreliable,” Murdoch, who controls the Wall Street Journal as executive chairman of News Corp., said in a statement. Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on Friday his company would fight misinformation and sensationalism on its platform by using member surveys to identify “trustworthy” outlets. “There has been much discussion about subscription models but I have yet to see a proposal that truly recognizes the investment in and the social value of professional journalism,” Murdoch said. The quality of news on Facebook has been called into question after alleged Russian operatives and spammers spread false reports on the site, including during the 2016 U.S. election campaign. Facebook and Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment. …

Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn has rejected a call by Egypt for World Bank arbitration in a dispute over a hydroelectric dam Addis Ababa is building along its share of the Nile. The two countries are at odds over the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, with Cairo fearing the project would restrict waters flowing down from Ethiopia’s highlands and through the deserts of Sudan to its fields and reservoirs. The Horn of Africa country, which aims to become the continent’s biggest power exporter, says the $4 billion-dam will have no such impact. With discussions deadlocked for months over the wording of a study on its environmental impact, Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry proposed late last month that the World Bank be allowed to help settle the dispute. “Seeking professional support is one thing, transferring [arbitration] to an institution is another thing. So we told them that this is not acceptable with our side,” the state-run Ethiopian News Agency quoted Hailemariam as saying. The agency, which spoke to Hailemariam upon his return from Cairo on Friday, said he rejected the proposal and said: “It is possible to reach agreement… through cooperation and with the spirit of trust.” After his meeting with the Ethiopian leader, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi pledged not to let differences over a construction of the dam ruin relations with Addis Ababa. Countries that share the river have argued over the use of its waters for decades — and analysts have repeatedly warned that the disputes could …

Australia has filed a formal complaint with the World Trade Organization that accuses Canada of placing “discriminatory” rules on the sales of imported wine. Canada is Australia’s fourth-biggest wine market. Officials in Canberra say rules in Canada unfairly discriminate against overseas wine. An official protest has been lodged with the World Trade Organization (WTO) against regulations in the Canadian province of British Columbia, where wine produced locally can be sold in grocery stores but imports must be sold in a “store within a store” with a separate cash register. Canberra’s objection also targets policies in other provinces, including Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia, as well as federal practices in Canada, which could breach a WTO agreement. They mean higher prices for foreign wines, as well as other barriers to sale, according to the Australian complaint. “Australia is seeing its market share and that market erode. That concerns me, it concerns wine exporters,” said Australian trade minister Steve Ciobo. “Potentially this could cost Australian jobs, so I want to make sure we are on the front foot about protecting Australia’s interests.” Australia’s complaint to the WTO is similar to one made by the United States, which has accused Canada of placing unfair limits on the sale of imported wine. In October, the U.S. said British Columbia was favoring local vineyards by giving their wine an exclusive retail outlet in grocery store shelves and cutting out U.S. competition. A spokesman for Canada’s international trade minister said the federal government works to ensure …

Iran’s supreme leader has ordered the Revolutionary Guard to loosen its hold on the economy, the country’s defense minister says, raising the possibility that the paramilitary organization might privatize some of its vast holdings. The comments this weekend by Defense Minister Gen. Amir Hatami appear to be a trial balloon to test the reaction of the idea, long pushed by Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate. Protests over the country’s poor economy last month escalated into demonstrations directly challenging the government.   But whether the Guard would agree remains unclear, as the organization is estimated to hold around a third of the country’s entire economy.   Hatami, the first non-Guard-affiliated military officer to be made defense minister in nearly 25 years, made the comments in an interview published Saturday by the state-run IRAN newspaper. He said Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered both the country’s regular military and the Guard to get out of businesses not directly affiliated to their work.   “Our success depends on market conditions,” the newspaper quoted Hatami as saying.   He did not name the companies that would be privatized. The Guard did not immediately acknowledge the supreme leader’s orders in their own publications, nor did Khamenei’s office.   The Guard formed out of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution as a force meant to protect its political system, which is overseen by Shiite clerics. It operated parallel to the country’s regular armed forces, growing in prominence and power during the country’s long and ruinous war …

Saudi Arabia’s energy minister urged global oil producing nations on Sunday to extend their cooperation beyond 2018, but said this might mean a new form of deal rather than continuing the same supply cuts that have boosted prices in recent months. It was the first time that Saudi Arabia had publicly raised the possibility of a new form of coordination among oil producers after 2018. Their agreement on supply cuts, originally launched last January, is set to expire in December this year. Cooperation ‘here to stay’ Khalid al-Falih, speaking to reporters ahead of a meeting later in the day of the joint ministerial committee, which oversees implementation of the cuts, said extending cooperation would convince the world that coordination among producers was “here to stay.” “We shouldn’t limit our efforts to 2018, we need to be talking about a longer framework of cooperation,“ Falih said. ”I am talking about extending the framework that we started, which is the declaration of cooperation, beyond 2018. “This doesn’t necessarily mean sticking barrel by barrel to the same limits or cuts, or production targets country by country that we signed up to in 2016, but assuring stakeholders, investors, consumers and the global community that this is something that is here to stay. And we are going to work together.” Falih said the global economy had strengthened while supply cuts, of which Saudi Arabia has shouldered by far the largest burden, had shrunk oil inventories around the world. As a result, the oil market will …

Afghanistan’s arts and architecture were once the pride of Asia. However, more than four decades of war have left many of the country’s traditional crafts on the verge of extinction. Now a Britain-based organization, Turquoise Mountain, is working to preserve Afghan heritage in the capital’s still surviving commercial district, Murad Khani. VOA Deewa service’s Munaza Shaheed reports from a recent trip to Kabul. …

Donald Trump, the presidential candidate, would not like the way Trump, the president, is crowing about today’s unemployment rate. He’d be calling the whole thing a “hoax.” Trump raised a red flag about declining jobless numbers during his campaign, denying President Barack Obama any credit. Trump noted that the jobless rate masks the true employment picture by leaving out the millions who have given up looking for work. But Trump is seeing red no more. The same stats he assailed in 2015 and 2016 now are his proof of “fantastic,” “terrific” economic progress, for which he wants the credit. That disconnect is part of why Trump’s statements about the economy this past week, some accurate on their face, fall short of the whole truth. Trump also made the far-fetched claim that the economy is better than it has ever been. And in a week consumed with the dustup over a government shutdown, Trump’s doctor stepped forward with a testament to the president’s health that other physicians found to be too rosy. A look at some recent remarks away from the din of the budget battle: Black unemployment TRUMP: “Black unemployment is the best it’s ever been in recorded history. It’s been fantastic. And it’s the best number we’ve had with respect to black unemployment. We’ve never seen anything even close.” — remarks from Oval Office Tuesday. THE FACTS: Yes, the black unemployment rate of 6.8 percent is the lowest on record. No, it’s not far and away superior to any …

Robots, artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies were all on display at the National Retail Federation (NRF) 2018 trade show. The event showcased the ways retailers are keeping pace with shoppers’ round-the-clock spending. Tina Trinh reports. …

U.S. President Donald Trump will be entering something of a lion’s den when he visits the elitist enclave of Davos next week, rubbing shoulders with the same “globalists” that he campaigned against in winning the 2016 election. Aides said some of Trump’s advisers had argued against him attending the World Economic Forum in order to steer clear of the event, which brings together political leaders, CEOs and top bankers. But in the end, they said, Trump, the first sitting U.S. president to attend the forum since Bill Clinton in 2000, wanted to go to call attention to growth in the U.S. economy and the soaring stock market. A senior administration official said Trump is expected to take a double-edged message to the forum in Switzerland, where he is to deliver a speech and meet some world leaders. Invest in US In his speech, Trump is expected to urge the world to invest in the United States to take advantage of his deregulatory and tax cut policies, stress his “America First” agenda and call for fairer, more reciprocal trade, the official said. During his 2016 election campaign, Trump blamed globalization for ravaging American manufacturing jobs as companies sought to reduce labor costs by relocating to Mexico and elsewhere. “Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very wealthy. But it has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache,” he said June 28, 2016, in Pennsylvania. Trump retains the same anti-globalist beliefs but has struggled to …